"I think, Ed, that I can understand a good many things of this. Things father knew, in theory—things he told me—" He checked himself. And when I questioned, he stopped me.
"Wait, Ed. It's confusing. It seems—tremendous." He stumbled over the word, but repeated it. "Tremendous." And then he added: "And perhaps—dastardly."
What could he mean by that? Nanette said: "But, Alan—that girl—there was a girl, came here to New York this morning—"
The girl! The shadow girl, from out of the shadows! She, at least, was something tangible now. We had seen her in Central Park this morning. The television screen now was vacant. It was destined never again to show us anything, but that we did not know. We had seen a girl arriving? Then, if so, she must be here—in Central Park, now.
Alan said: "I wonder if we should report it. That girl probably will be found." He had been into one of the other rooms of the small apartment a few moments before. He drew me there now. "Ed, I want to show you something significant. Perhaps significant—I don't know, yet."
Nanette followed after us. The bedroom faced south. We were high in a towering apartment building, just east of Fifth Avenue.
Over the lower roofs of the city I could see far to the south. In the waning starlight down there a single searchlight beam was standing up into the sky.
"Where is it?" I demanded. "The Battery? A ship in the harbor? Or Staten Island?"
Somewhere down there, a white shaft of light standing motionless. It was fading in the growing daylight.
"On Staten Island," said Alan. "It's a small searchlight on the roof of the Turber Hospital. It often stands like that. Haven't you ever noticed it?"